[Editor’s Note: According to an update we’ve been alerted to by the editors of ZDNet, they now would like to consider the original post retracted.  From the original post is a note from Larry Dignan: “I’m ending this back and forth now. This story, which derived from a blog post in Iran, has turned into a he said-Yahoo said go-round. Yahoo has denied the charges that it has turned over names to Iran and called the allegations completely false. Short of second and third sourcing, ZDNet must consider this report unreliable.” –mrh]

ZDNet’s Richard Koman published late last night a report alleging that Yahoo may have provided the Iranian regime with the names of around 200,000 Yahoo Mail users during the height of the #IranElection protests. He attributes his information as originating from a post on the Blogspot blog Iranian Students Solidarity.

He had the relevant post translated (in much clearer English than Google’s Persian translator was able to provide):

On 27th of Shahrivar (Day of Qods) when Iranians demonstrated again on the streets, the Iranian authorities in addition to blocking many internet sites, all over Iran, blocked or severely limited access to Yahoo and Google. Google did not react and its problem was resolved with 48 hours, but Yahoo sent a representative to Iran’s telecommunications ministry, to resolve the issue.

During the meeting with Iranian Internet authorities and telecommunications authorities, Yahoo representatives were asked to provide Iranian authorities with the names (data) on all Iranian Internet account holders in exchange for removing the block/filter on the Yahoo website.

The Yahoo representative subsequently expressed that currently there were more than 20 million email accounts and providing such a list will be a very time-consuming process. To which the IRGC (Islamic Republic Guardian Council) replied by asking the representative to provide email accounts of those individuals who have Yahoo accounts and are publishing blogs.

Apparently this made Yahoo’s task a bit easier and the Yahoo representative agreed to provide such a list within a matter of hours. Upon the receipt of such a list, which included approximately 200,000 emails, by the Iranian authorities, the regime immediately unblocked access to the Yahoo.com website. The list went back as far as five years and included active and inactive accounts and blogs.

It is necessary to mention here that the Iranian Yahoo is managed by Yahoo Corporation in Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur).

He qualified his post with the intro: “I realize this is not completely buttoned down, but I believe there is sufficient veracity in what I have right now to publish. I am expecting to be able to provide further proof as the story unfolds.”

A brief discussion and dismissal via Twitter erupted between a number of A-Listers, including Marshall Kirkpatrick, Frederic Lardinois, Robert Scoble and myself. Ultimately the consensus seemed to be that “these allegations don’t pass the smell test.”

Does It Pass the Smell Test?

Typically, when I find that a story is far too juicy to pass up, it’s generally too good to be true. That was what my instincts told me with regard to the Nokia-Seimens story I found in the Wall Street Journal, a topic we covered quite extensively here at SiliconANGLE.

In the case of that story, it was alleged by the WSJ that Nokia had sold deep-packet-inspection tools to the current Iranian regime, when it turned out (in line with our early analysis) that Nokia doesn’t even sell deep packet inspection equipment or software.

Of course, this hasn’t prevented sales of Nokia phones from dropping dramatically in Iran as well as the ongoing protests at Nokia reseller locations in the country.

As I said to Scoble last night via Twitter, I’m willing to give Yahoo a pass on this – at least until the facts shake out or they have a chance to respond. The allegation that Yahoo was able to, within a couple of hours, filter out from their 20 million Iranian email users the 200,000 that use a blog is a little fishy (not impossible – but fairly unlikely).

If this story holds any water at all, we’ll follow up with some further analysis, but as it stands, we’re highly suspicious.